This Close to Happy

Brilliant, scathing, heartbreaking and raw. This is the most powerfully honest book on depression and child abuse that I have ever read. Merkin’s bereft childhood of brutality and lack seems to be the fertile ground that created her despondency and the tenacious, pervasive longing for suicide. Her parents appear blatantly psychologically disordered, meting out damage as casually as one would order lunch. Merkin is by turns, attached to, and repelled by, a vicious mother, who seems both stunningly narcissistic and psychopathic. I was frustrated by Merkin’s struggle to detach from her mother, much in the same way that abused wives return to their abusers, expecting different outcomes. Merkin was drowning in depression, yet repeatedly returned to her parents seeking solace, approval and a revisionist history that neither parent was emotionally equipped to provide. The repeated returns to the abusive environment only seemed to exacerbate the depression and parental control, all in a continuous self-perpetuating loop. I rooted for Merkin to cut the toxic ties in favor of mental health and self actualization, but her journey to contentment was more circuitous. I applaud Merkin’s ability to craft riveting and beautiful prose from the wreckage and horror of her early years. This book is both difficult to read at times, and equally hard to put down. My hope is that Merkin never chooses to succumb to the lure of suicide, but instead continues to write, to enjoy simple pleasures and allows herself to heal. A highly recommended read.

I purchased this book because I was in a deep clinical depression – a battle I – like the author – have fought since childhood. Reading how others – especially fellow authors – manage their depression is usually insightful and helpful to me.

Sadly, this book did nothing to help me to cope with my bout with depression. In fact, it just made it worse, exacerbated by the fact that I had wasted money on this book. Like the other one-star reviewers, I needed to skip ahead – a LOT.

Merkin’s style of writing might be okay for a New Yorker article. But slogging through nearly 300 pages about emotions written in a journalistic style is too much for this reader. And the psychiatrists Merkin saw certainly did not help her to put her childhood behind her. Sixtysomething is way to old to still be blaming one’s parents.

I read this while severely depressed and found it helpful. This isn’t the point of the bookit’s a beautifully-written, insightful, firsthand account of someone’s lifelong struggle with depressionbut as I imagine a large number of people who pick up this book will, like me, be looking for some insight into their own situation, I’ll say that I, for one, found some. I, like Daphne, sometimes struggle to accept depression as an illness as opposed to a personal failing, even as I live it, and reading someone else’s honest accountexperiencing empathy and finding many shared experiences along the wayencouraged me to be a bit kinder to myself.

I quite loved Merkin’s literary asides, I am a reader as well. This book definely brought me into depression, a mood disorder I don’t happen to have but the writing here is somehow contagious. I didn’t mind that terrible feeling as it lifted when I finished the book. Merkin’s strength here is showing in blazingly purposeful detail: The parents, the other kids, and her childhood. If one image stands out for me it is of her Jewish mother drawing Nazi imagery on her arms. I mean, these parents should have been fined, in my honest opinion. My confusion lies in how do the author become happier? Was it the pain pills she mentions. Or the small home on Long Island that she rents, or was it having the energy to have friends visit? Her daughter’s love? Her love for her daughter? I am sure all those helped but the leap from abject misery to ‘close to happy’ wasn’t clear to me and so must affect many depressives looking for concrete answers. Merkins writes so well but what she left out is telling. 4 big stars

It was riveting and disturbing and beautifully written. I felt very close to her and then a little impatient and wanted to fix her and give her some suggestions, like quit already with the Freudian analysis and try some cognitive techniques.
But then I’m worried about her and not objectively observing her writing. Definitely pulled me in, argued wit her that my mother was worse.
I would have liked to get closer in to her mind set when she was in the depths of depression,,what sort of thoughts, and I thought she left that kind of vague.
Beautiful book, had to be so hard to write, but rewarding.

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